Heirlooms, page 13
He hit his forehead with his palm. “By golly, I forgot to ask Annika. Follow me.”
I followed him to a large coop and run enclosure where the young woman was feeding chickens.
“Young lady, I would like you to meet someone.”
The young woman set down her bucket and walked toward me. Her gloves reached up past her elbows, and her boots came above her knees. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Sensibly dressed for outdoor work. I liked her from the start.
“I’m Cassidy.” I held out my hand, but she didn’t take it.
“Cassidy, like the old Helen Cassidy?”
“Yep. Helen was my grandmother. I’m Cassidy Quinn.”
She nodded, not wanting to shake my hand with her dirty gloves on, I guessed. “I liked your grandmother,” she said. “I’m sorry about her passing.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Me too. Mr. Beeksma says you’re looking for work this summer. I’m looking for someone to come and harvest strawberries, weed, water, and do some general plant care. Maybe for about ten to twelve hours a week?”
She paused before answering. “Okay. I’m saving for photography stuff. I’m going to the community college in September to study photography. I need more hours, and I work hard.”
“Perfect.” Mindful of Brenda’s admonition that summer help was hard to come by, I asked, “Could you come by soon and we’ll figure out some hours together? I think Saturdays would be fine, with maybe an afternoon or two in the middle of the week. If that’s not taking you away from Mr. Beeksma.”
He shook his head. “No, no, I only have a few hours’ worth of work each week for her and DJ.”
“Great,” I said. “Could you stop by tomorrow afternoon? I can jot down my address.”
“Tomorrow is fine,” Annika said. “I know where you live. I started working for your grandmother last year. It didn’t work out.”
She turned around and returned to the chicken runs and coops, feeding them from a scrap bucket and then heading to refill the feeders with poultry ration.
“What did she mean?” I asked Mr. Beeksma.
He shrugged. “First time I heard of it.” He turned to return to work and then turned back to me. “Keep an eye on your septic. Helen replaced the pipes to the house a year or two ago, expensive business, but as I recall, the septic was acting up too. Gurgling noises. Slow flushes and the like.” He pulled on his cap and headed back to his field.
That stinks, I thought with a wry smile, and then I drove the few short blocks home, pulled the car into the garage, and walked up the path to the house. After I’d trimmed back the dead leaves and black spot, the blushing yellow Peace roses revived nicely and would bloom soon. I left the wilting greenery on the winter bulbs so they could store up nutrients before I trimmed them back. Sometimes what seems dead is really quietly rebuilding a new life.
In the kitchen, Grace had set out everything we needed to make iced lattes. “The house is yours?”
“It’s mine!”
“Let’s celebrate!” We took our lattes outside and sat in two creaky garden chairs in the middle of the bed where I’d planted dozens of dahlia bulbs. I pointed at the forsythia branches arcing in long delicate curves lush with popping yellow blossoms. “Those make beautiful branch bouquets too. You want to take some to your mom when you go for dinner tonight?”
“She’d love that,” Grace said. “Thank you!”
I found my snippers in the greenhouse and a bucket to carry the branches in, and we walked to the bush to cut some. “It’s by the mugunghwa.” I used the Korean name for rose of Sharon because Grace’s grandmother always had.
Grace looked across the garden. “Your gran and mine, they were such good friends. My halmoni driving out here all the time after she no longer worked at the Naval base to spend time with your gran.” Grace wiped away a tear. “I miss her. I was her favorite, you know, though she’d never have said so. Honestly, she was kind of perfect. My grandfather thinks so, for sure. If he didn’t think it was idolatry, I’d say he worshiped the ground she walked on. That’s why, well, you know.” She looked down. “I can’t really devastate him.”
We hadn’t said much about the hanbok. “You want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “Not now.”
She went to get ready for dinner with her family and I wandered out to the acres of evergreens, pines, and Douglas firs Gran loved so much. She’d walked her acreage almost every day, rain or shine, sometimes with me or a friend, but often alone. A few yards inside those woods, the temperature changed. The air grew cool, and as I stepped on the fallen needles, the scent of pine rose, perfuming the air I breathed.
Aromatherapy, Gran used to say. More like therapy, I’d tease, because Gran was of the generation that did not believe in therapists. Whenever she was tired or afraid or overwrought, she would leave the house and ramble among her trees. When she came back, all was right in her world.
I headed out of the woods and then back toward the house. As I approached the fruit orchard, I saw someone. Someone taking pictures with her phone. I headed over. “Annika?”
She didn’t turn at the sound of my voice, even when I spoke right behind her. I touched her shoulder and she flinched as though I’d burned her. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said. “I called out a few times.”
She shrugged off my touch and then smiled lightly. “Can you believe the angles of the trees and how the blossoms are just perfect right now?” She showed me her screen. “The moss on the branches adds great texture. Don’t ever remove it.”
Her pictures were actually very good. She had an artistic eye. She couldn’t have edited the photos because she’d just taken them.
“We should have lots of fruit this year,” I said. “The bees did a great job pollinating them.”
She stepped back from me and the tree. “Bees?” Her voice rose half an octave.
“Yeah, you know, to pollinate the plants. We can’t grow apples without them. Do you have apples on your farm?” I asked.
“Nope. We pretty much stick to cattle,” she said as she scrolled through her camera roll. “But this tree was named for my grandpa.” She pointed to a picture of the biggest, best tree on our property. Right in front of it was the wooden sign, now truly weather-beaten, with a name burned into the wood. Mickey.
“Mickey was your grandfather?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Johanna Jansen’s son Mickey?”
She nodded again. “She was my great-grandma.”
Well, that was cool. “Johanna was one of Gran’s very best friends.” Maybe that had been one reason Gran had hired Annika. What had gone wrong? “I love knowing that your grandpa is ‘in’ the apple orchard,” I said. “My gramps and I used to pick apples every year, just the two of us, and Gran and I would make and freeze pies for the neighbors.” I glanced at my watch. “I know we said tomorrow, but should we walk to the garden, and I can show you some of the things I’d like you to do?”
“Sure,” she said.
We made our way back to where the lettuce, tomatoes, and salad onions for the CSA boxes ripened. “Once a week, they’ll need to be weeded. I’ll show you how next week, as I’ve already done it this week. I might need you to do some planting for me, some hauling, watering if I haven’t gotten to it—basic garden chores. Amending the soil and working with all of the flowers I’ve just settled in. I can show you how to do that, too. Cleaning the tools with the hose.” I indicated the hoses and the tools. “Do those sound like things you can do?”
She nodded and then knelt to take a picture of the Korean perilla on the edge of the vegetable section. “This is the most amazing plant I have ever seen. Purple on the backside, super-sharp veins.”
She stood up and showed me the picture. It was great and tightly focused. She was having a little bit of trouble focusing on what I was saying, though, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Last, I’ll need help harvesting the strawberries so I can sell them. They’ll start coming in early to mid-June.”
She stared at me. “That’s what I had problems with before. The berries. Your grandmother needed help with them, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt overwhelmed, so I had to quit. I’m autistic,” she said matter-of-factly.
I admired her forthright approach. “Okay.”
She continued, “Touching things with unusual textures, to me, is almost painful. I just can’t deal with it. This year—” she wiggled her hands in front of me—“I bought long gloves. With touch screen fingertips so I can still use my phone.”
“Smart,” I said. “You sure you’re good with it?” I could barely afford to pay her already, but I definitely couldn’t afford to pay her for work she couldn’t do.
“Yeah,” she said. “I was sorry to hear your grandma died because I wanted to prove myself to her with the gloves this year.”
“She’d be proud of you, and I think the gloves are an ingenious solution.”
Annika looked around. “You’ve got a lot of work to do here. It doesn’t even look like a garden. Just a lot of mud and half-grown plants.”
“Well, I’m just getting started.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my camera roll. “Here’s the garden in California—the culinary garden—where I used to work.” Picture after picture of lavender fields and herb gardens, raised boxes filled with lettuce, spilling with nasturtiums, hoops of tomato plants, backs bent with plump fruit. “My dream is to be a master gardener.”
“Did you start all of that—” she indicated the ground before us with her hand—“from this?”
I shook my head. “No, I pretty much helped the master gardener, who was in charge, and she took over from someone else.” Botanical manicurist.
Annika stared frankly. “Isn’t that boring? Like editing someone else’s pictures instead of taking your own?”
Taken aback, I stepped away by a foot. She continued to stare at me, but not rudely, with genuine interest. The thing was, she was right. “Yes, that’s a good way to put it. I’m going to start with my own garden here.”
“With those?” She indicated my vegetable boxes.
“Yes,” I said. “Partly. My dream? Earning a living by growing acres of flowers. They feed the soul—mine and others’. From this.” I tapped my toe into the ground near flowers I had carefully plotted and planted, but which looked nothing like the Insta-ready pictures I’d just shown her.
“Master of your own garden,” she said with a smile. “Starting from scratch with what you want to do sounds more fulfilling.”
I grinned. “You’re right. It may be muddy, but hey. ‘Do not despise small beginnings.’”
She didn’t acknowledge that but instead glanced around at various points in the garden, her gaze stopping here and there along the way.
“Are you looking for something?” I asked.
She nodded. “You need more help. My friend DJ, who’s twenty, works with me at Mr. Beeksma’s. He needs about five more hours per week of work. I’ll ask him.”
I shook my head. “I wish I could, but after I pay you, I’ll pretty much be tapped out.”
“He’ll be great here. You’ll see. I’ll work his hours for free if you need me to, if you take him on with me on Saturdays.”
Was DJ her boyfriend? I didn’t know how I felt about that. Sometimes it worked out, but sometimes one partner was just really not suited to the work. Intrigued by her willingness to forgo pay, though, I said, “You can bring him by, and we’ll talk. That’s all I can promise.”
She nodded. “See you next week.”
Both Grace and I were up early the next Saturday, she deep in her law journals, me deep in mulch, spreading some over my plant roots so they’d stay cool in the summer’s heat. I visited my baby sunflowers at the garden’s margin. Hard to believe they’d tower over me at six feet by the end of the summer.
Annika would arrive soon. I was just on the wire, financially, and no matter how I’d worked my bank account numbers over the past few days, I couldn’t swing another person. I’d think of a good way to let her friend DJ down with grace and hope Annika wasn’t hurt by it or quit. Despite my natural inclinations, all the practical people in my life reminded me that in the real world, business decisions need to be made by the head and not the heart.
About thirty minutes before they were supposed to arrive, Annika texted, I’ll be there soon, and DJ is coming with his mom so she can check things out.
His mom was going to check things out?
Okay . . . just a little confused, I responded. Why is his mom coming?
I think it’s better to let him speak for himself.
All righty, then. I headed in to refill my coffee and met Grace in the kitchen. She seemed a bit more like herself in the days after we found the hanbok but still a little preoccupied.
“So apparently that guy coming to apply for a job is bringing his mom,” I said.
“His mom? How old is he?”
“Twenty, I think.” I poured a glass of iced coffee from the fridge and mixed in half-and-half, no sugar. “I wonder if it’s her boyfriend. It’s weird that she was trying to get him a job when she barely had one herself. I know they work together at Mr. Beeksma’s.”
“You’ll have to let me know how it goes.” Her voice sounded stressed. “Still coming home with me for dinner tonight?”
I put the coffee back in the fridge. “Yep. I’d love to show your mom my cookbook because she loves to cook, too, and I think there’s a recipe from your halmoni in there. It’s in Korean.”
At 10:00 sharp, two cars pulled up the drive and parked at the barn. Annika got out of one car and then a woman about the age my mom would have been got out of the driver’s side of the second car. She opened the passenger door and a young man emerged. There was something unusual about his gait—I could see it even at a distance. He was short—much shorter than Annika—and wore a baseball cap. As he walked, up on his tiptoes, tilting forward a bit, his cap slipped sideways.
As they came closer, I knew right away that he had Down syndrome.
“Hello.” I held out my hand to the woman and then to the young man. “I’m Cassidy Quinn. Nice to meet you both.”
“It’s a pleasure,” the woman said. “Marcia Peterson.”
“Nice . . . to . . . meet you,” the young man said. He lifted his head to meet my gaze. “My . . . name is . . . Derrick James. My friends . . . call me . . . DJ.”
I glanced up at his sideways hat and smiled. “I see why.”
He smiled too. “I . . . have Down syndrome. I . . . like to work.”
“I remembered how much your gran loved birds,” Annika spoke up. “So does DJ. When I was here last time, I noticed that all your bird feeders were empty, and all the birds I saw here when your grandmother was alive were gone. Once I met you, I thought maybe this would be a safe place for him and a good thing for you too. DJ and I know each other from a support group we both attend.”
I nodded and said softly, “You’re right. I haven’t tended to the bird feeders. And . . . this, my real home, has always been my safe place. I want it to be like that for others too.” I turned back to DJ. “What kind of work do you like to do?”
“I like . . . animals,” he said. “I don’t . . . like mean people.”
“I don’t either.” Pamela flashed through my mind. “Where have you worked?”
“At a . . . restaurant.” He hung his head and looked at his shoes.
“He worked for a local fast-food company,” Marcia filled in. “His job was to greet people and take out the trash.”
“I fed . . . birds. More birds came. They told me to . . . stop.”
A minute ticked by, perhaps more than a minute. Annika, Marcia, and I waited. The wind blew a bit and kids riding bicycles chimed their bike bells, punctuating their chatter.
“I did not stop,” DJ finally spoke. “The birds . . . were hungry.”
“They felt his giving fries to the crows brought too many birds around the trash areas,” Marcia said. “It just wasn’t a good fit.”
My heart softened. “What kinds of things do you like to do at work?”
“Feed birds.”
I laughed and then he did, too, and Annika and Marcia joined in. “What else?” I asked.
Another long silence elapsed. “Feed . . . chickens.”
“He feeds the chickens with me at the Beeksmas’,” Annika said.
“I don’t have chickens. At least for now. Do you like flowers?”
He quickly continued his thought. “I like . . . flowers. And . . .”
We waited.
“I don’t like digging.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “We’ll leave that to Annika, and this year’s plants are mostly in, anyway. Next year, we’ll have many more and hopefully many more hands to help us!” After I figured out how to solve the immediate crisis, the tax exemption problem, I hoped to expand the flowers by an acre every year if I had “seed” money and the time and crew to do it, eventually building flower farming into a way to make a good living—and a good life.
“Okay,” Annika agreed. And then in a flash, she whipped out her camera and walked toward the row of newly planted lettuces.
Well, I guessed it was a good time to talk with DJ and his mom.
I looked at him and then at one of the bird feeders, which had not been stocked since I’d been back. Gran had maybe twenty bird feeders all over our cleared property. Maybe more.
Gran loved birds. I loved birds. When I’d packed up Gran’s room, I’d found an old-school metal box marked Rainy Day Fund with fifty ten-dollar bills inside. Gran hated banks. Necessary evils, she called them.
There wasn’t a cloud in sight, but this was undoubtedly a “rainy day,” and since Nick had put up my CSA website for free, I’d put that fund to good use. My safe place could be Annika’s safe place and DJ’s safe place, and then maybe one day, a safe place for an even bigger community. “Feeding the birds is a very important job,” I said. “It’s so important that God says he, too, feeds the birds. I would like you to fill those bird feeders for me every week. Would you like that job?”
